Amazon Echo Show Review

When it comes to your smart home, think of the platform as the foundation. It’s what will give you your voice assistant, in this case the illustrious Alexa, and how you’ll watch TV and movies, listen to music, cook, shop online, and more. In fact, Amazon has over 50,000 skills for the Echo Show, which is the most popular of the smart home platforms. But is it up to Security Baron’s standards?

In this review, I’m telling you everything there is to know about the Amazon Echo Show— its design, installation process, features, and customer support. By the end of this review, you’ll have a great idea of whether or not the Echo Show is right for you, or if you have to go back to the drawing board. Let’s get started!

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Amazon Echo Show

Amazon Echo Show

The Amazon Echo Show is the world's most popular smart speaker with over 50,000 skills available in categories like music, video, and shopping.

Pros and Cons

Amazon Echo Show and Box

Before I go too fair into detail, and I am want to do, I want to tell you about the Amazon Echo’s pros and cons.

Pros

Highest number of skills: Currently, Amazon Alexa has over 50,000 skills, which is about ten times more than Google Assistant. Also, being the most popular voice assistant, it’s integrated into the most smart home devices when compared to Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit and Microsoft Cortana.

Amazing capabilities: From playing music to controlling connected devices, there’s very little you can’t do with the Amazon Echo.

Connect with other Echo-users: Whenever you want, you’ll be able to call anyone with an Echo supported device through Alexa.

Cons

Plug-in: Unfortunately, there’s no wireless version of the Amazon Echo available as of writing.

Reflective screen: This device isn’t good for a room with a lot of natural lights or bright lights, as there’s a lot of blare.

Lag: I was disappointed at the amount of lag I had when navigating through menus, apps and programs.

Design of the Amazon Echo Show

Amazon Echo Show

The Amazon Echo Show plugs into your wall and connects to Wi-Fi in order to get its data. Available in charcoal or sandstone (gray and black for you non-interior design fans), the show has a 10.1 inch screen, which is really nice to watch things on. The display is 720p HD or 1280 x 800. Now, this isn’t the current industry standard of 1080p HD, but it’ll still give you a clear display.

Of course, along with video comes sound. With Dolby processing, the Echo Show has dual two inch 10W speakers with a passive bass radiator— if you don’t know what that means, it’ll bring your bass to the next level, which is perfect for anyone that loves bumping tunes or watching horror movies in particular.

Back of the Amazon Echo Show

Of course, the Echo Show has two-way audio from eight microphones, four on the front, four on the back. If you want privacy, you can turn off both the microphones as well as the camera.

Now, at Amazon, they’ve really thought of everything. The back of the show is a fabric overlap with only one power adapter, so it’s not a mess of cords. Plus, the bottom is made of rubber so it won’t slide around too much. Ideal design features, if you ask me!

Installing the Amazon Echo Show

Installing the Amazon Echo Show

To install the Amazon Echo Show, all you need to do is plug it into power and connect it to Wi-Fi— easy as pie! After you do that, you’ll sync the Show with your Amazon account and perform all necessary firmware/ software updates. From start to finish, the process took about 10 minutes.

Features of the Amazon Echo Show

Amazon Echo Show Features

Okay Alexa, what’s the weather today? If you haven’t been living under a rock, then you probably know that Alexa is the Amazon Echo Show’s voice assistant. Just say Alexa to ask her a question or command her to do an action. Alexa has over 50,000 skills ranging from cooking to shopping to meditating. Of course, we can’t talk about all of Alexa’s skills, but here’s a basic overview of what she can do.

Music

Music on the Amazon Echo Show

If music be the food of love, play on! With your Amazon Echo Show, you can listen to music through Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, and more. You’ll also be able to listen to Audible audiobooks, another Amazon venture.

Video and Video Chatting

With a 10 inch screen, the Echo Show is perfect to watch movies and TV on. Choose from Prime Video, Vevo, Hulu, and more. Or, you can Skype with your friends if you’re feeling social.

Shopping

Food Shopping on the Amazon Echo Show

Of course, a huge advantage of the Amazon Echo Show is how easily you can use it to shop on Amazon. It is the everything store, after all! Plus, Amazon owns Whole Foods, which makes it super easy to add items to your grocery cart from the comfort of your own home. You’ll never run out of sugar again!

Cooking

Recipe Instructions on the Amazon Echo Show

I’m a huge fan of cooking, and the Amazon Echo Show is definitely cooking-friendly. It’s super helpful when my hands are otherwise occupied that I can ask Alexa to read my directions, convert some measurements, or set a timer. I can also ask her to buy me an ingredient if i run out, search for a recipe, or play a recipe video. If I’m not in the cooking mood, of course, I can order food through Seamless or make a dinner reservation through OpenTable. All in all, the Echo Show makes cooking a lot easier and less stressful. After all, who remembers how many cups are in an quart?

The User Experience

Overall, the Amazon Echo Show is really intuitive to use, seamlessly piecing together useful features, like a weather or calendar skill, with fun features. Watch the video above to see me actually using the Amazon Echo Show!

Amazon’s Customer Support

Most of you are probably already familiar with Amazon’s customer support, which in my opinion, is some of the best around. If you have a problem, the first place you should check is their extensive online help center. If that’s not helpful, you can speak to someone over the phone or submit a request online. In my experience, Amazon always puts the customer first and is very flexible on wrong orders, returns and exchanges.

The Amazon Echo Show has a 4.4 rating on Amazon from 3,146 customer reviews. Over 70% of the reviews are a perfect five stars, which is really impressive. When I looked at the reviews that mentioned customer support/ service specifically, nine were negative and ten were positive, so basically split down the middle. I was pretty surprised that the positive reviews weren’t more of a majority, as I’ve always had good experiences with their support, but to each his own!

On Google, Amazon’s corporate headquarters in Seattle only have a 1.8 rating from 129 reviews. Unfortunately, all of the reviews that mentioned customer support were negative. Now, it’s important to mention the obvious, that Google is one of Amazon’s biggest competitors, so I’m not sure either site is super trustworthy in this arena. But overall, I think it’s fair to say that Amazon’s customer support is mixed.

Get Best Offer

Amazon Echo Show

Amazon Echo Show

The Amazon Echo Show is the world's most popular smart speaker with over 50,000 skills available in categories like music, video, and shopping.

Recap of the Amazon Echo Show

Overall, I definitely recommend the Amazon Echo Show. It has excellent audio and visual quality and a robust feature set. However, it is pretty expensive, but I think it’s worth it. If you want a cheaper option, I’d check out the Amazon Echo Show 5. But overall, the Amazon Echo Show is intuitive and definitely makes my life a lot more convenient.

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Gabe Turner is an attorney and journalist with a passion for home tech and secure, efficient living. Since graduating from NYU Law, he has maintained a paradoxical existence of trying to live life adventurously while remaining staunchly risk-averse. He is torn by the dual desires of wanting to only be in Brooklyn writing about housing policy and smart home tech and aspiring to visit his friends scattered across the globe. Gabe believes that stable, safe communities are the cornerstone to a vibrant and healthy society, and it is this passion that brought him to contribute to Security Baron.